Southeast Ag Expo

I've mentioned before my itty bitty guilt of living within the city limits, feeling like I'm somehow letting down my rural roots.  Like I mentioned there, our kids are experiencing many things we never got to because we were living in the country, but the pull towards rural-ness is still strong in me.

So I find myself gravitating toward events, places and people that will bring the rural life a little closer to home.  I love attending the Youth Fair.  Yes, it is stinky.  Yes, I end up cleaning poop off of 5 pairs of shoes the next day.  Yes, the Clean Freak Fairy within me has a battle with the cleanliness factor there, hoping that the hundreds of chicken, rabbit, steer and hog cages/stalls that my kids touched were NOT the ones harboring some foreign object that would inevitably turn our bathrooms and stomachs into churning nightmares.  I do love seeing their faces light up when they see the animals and having the opportunity to talk about what we're seeing.  I enjoy looking at all the home-ec entries, admiring the handiwork from such young children, and yearning for the day to start teaching my daughter how to sew.  Hopefully, I'm planting seeds of interest in them that will one day sprout.

There's a family less than a mile away from us that I enjoy our kids hanging out with.  They have done an excellent job of living in town but still live rural-like by having a garden, actively participating in 4-H, achieving first place in many of their home-ec entries, canning and cooking galore and bringing the general farm to their 1/4 acre lot in town.  Actually, the two daughters, babysit for us often and they are FAB!

So, when Jim mentioned us taking the kids to the Ag Expo in Moultrie, GA, I jumped at the chance.  I didn't even give myself enough time to process how long 3 kids would be in the car, how it would interfere with naps and how early we'd have to leave to make the timing of all this work.  I just thought, "Can't live in the country, we'll go to it!"

Thank goodness little guy fell asleep.  Just wish it was earlier than 15 minutes before we got there.

 

Sweet boy.

 

Our first visit when we got there, the equipment of course!

 

I could soooo drive one of these.  Can't you see it?

He could soooo drive one of these also.

And one of these.

This is what heaven looks like to this 18-month old boy.

It was a good trip.  We took the grandparents along also.  They helped keep kids in the round-up and keep them entertained.

Looking forward to October 2013. :)

Coon Hollo

We visited the 2nd annual Coon Hollo Corn Maze this year. Last year was their first year, and it went quite well.

Some pics of the fun...

Kids love this stuff! Something as simple as corn!
And being able to climb up on hay bales! Can it get any better?
This year was a little different because I had a personal stake in how well they did. Amy offered for me to sell some 'wares in her mom's "Nana's Country Store." So, true to my nature, rather than break out the old sewing machine, I broke out the internet and started ordering wholesale.

There's this store in St. Augustine that Jim and I always visit and the purses in there are cute. Cute enough for me to talk about them after we leave because I'm always so cheap I don't want to buy one. The last time we visited, I took a peak of the brand name of those purses and decided to do a little investigative work. They were sold online by a company out of Atlanta. Whoo hoo! Hot diggity dog! I've got my merchandise.

Six shipments later, a month worth of sales, and one full weekend of working the store, I came out ok. Enough to start a pretty good Christmas fund.

The highlight of my little attempt at retail is being able to add "celebrity clientele" to my resume. A movie star celebrity and his wife happen to live here in Ocala. John Travolta didn't make it to Coon Hollo, but his beautiful, 8-months pregnant, wife, Kelly did. And she bought one of my purses! (I don't really have to go into how it was for one of her daughter's friends, but I'll save her the embarrassment anyway.) It made working that weekend even more special.

Memorial weekend overload

When it rains it pours, right?

We usually go through months worth of nothing to do outside of normal household maintenance activities and/or events other people have planned and graciously have invited us to. But this weekend was different. Ha! Finally! And Mr. "Realistic" (I say sarcastically) predicted a Mommy meltdown.

Friday started with a fabulous trip to the farm, followed by an unplanned trip to the car dealership to have the tires re-balanced from a routine check-up on Thursday. (Is tire balancing really that hard?) That in itself was enough to make me crash later on that night because it meant unloading two car seats and two kids into the shuttle van to take us home for lunch and lay them down for naps. Then, loading the car seats back inside the shuttle van with two sleepy kids along with all their stay-the-night paraphernalia. Unloading and loading it all back inside the newly re-balanced car to head south.

This is where I must digress . . . Have you ever seen a woman carry a car seat from one car to another with a child in it? Twice? I haven't either and I know why. They (the car seats, that is) are way too heavy, bulky, awkward and full of dead weight. The woman, with diminished arm strength compared to a man, has to hunch over, bear hug the car seat and use the top part of her thighs to help hold it all up, while annoying latch straps dangle and get caught underneath the seat after she's managed to heave it inside the car. So why would a woman do this? Ironically enough, laziness I guess. I was the hunched over woman who was frankly so sick of loading and unloading all that crap, because someone couldn't balance the tires correctly, that I was willing to take some short cuts. And boy did I look like a beauty queen in training while doing it.

Back to the story... Thankfully, the in-laws were bravely going where few choose to go on purpose, and were watching the four middle munchkins overnight and all the next day. We were on a time crunch trying to get out of the car dealership so mommy and daddy could have some big people time. So I rushed south, dropped the little angels off, rushed home and at the last minute we headed off to our most favorite restaurant of all time, The Columbia.

The Columbia has ranked extremely high on my list of all-time favorite places to eat since way before kids. Their 1905 salad was my first official pregnancy craving with Katherine and anytime we get a chance to "get out", we'll usually head to St. Augustine to sample their exquisite cuisine.

So off we went to St. Augustine. We decided to stay the night and chose a hotel on the beach just north of there. I've always loved beaches. Jim hasn't. He pretty much only goes to them because of me. Isn't that love? We had a lazy walk along the water's edge the next morning while collecting shells for the princess, made a trip to the Outlet malls nearby and ate way too much.

Later on that evening, we pick up the exhausted kids and headed home. The next day Sunday, was pretty routine until that evening. We took both kids to my grandparent's pool and Jim got to see how much of a fish Nathan is turning into (or his lack of respect for the water, whichever it is). They both swam and swam and swam. It really is tiring to watch them constantly because they both are so eager to get in and enjoy the water, but their skills aren't there to support it.

Monday morning, we woke up and headed to the lake to meet my dad and brother's family. Dad brought his boat, which I was a little apprehensive about, but much to my surprise Nathan was extremely still as long as he was "driving." Go figure. We did the usual grilling of hamburgers and hotdogs, ate too much again and got back in the water. The kids swam and swam and swam, again and were crazy-tired that evening.

One important side note: Katherine reluctantly learned how to use the bathroom while at the lake. Let's just say, no one ever says they have to go pee while at the lake, they just take care of it. (wink, wink)

And then, to top it all off, we visited some friends for some more grilling and to let our kiddos play some more.

Needless to say, we opted to not go to our usual day of school today and chose to stay home and take it easy.

I am proud to announce there was no Mommy-meltdown, but there were some seriously tired kiddos with a tad bit of 'tude. But, it was all well worth it. They are so fun right now and I so enjoy spending time with them.

A visit to the farm

We got to go visit my dad, CowPapa, at his house today.
As you can imagine, Nathan was in heaven. Not only did he get to ride and "drive" dad's lawn mower, he got to also drive the buggy, Dodge dually, boat and John Deere tractor (that just happened to match the shirt his mommy made him). Whoo hoo! Can it get any better than that?
Katherine was slightly less than impressed with the outing. Go figure. Her grip on my leg would get a little tighter when the cows got too close to the buggy, the dogs were too friendly and the bugs landed on her too much. I'm afraid she's not much of an outside kinda gal. I'm sure her non-interest in the farm had nothing to do with her tripping and falling into fresh manure, with both hands. It was hard for both of them to remember there were fresh patties all around the feed troughs, so the shoes got a good hosin' off after all was said and done. The good news is, I'm getting better about all this kids-mixing-with-cow-poop stuff, I prepared for it. (Thank you God for travel-size and convenient antibacterial wet wipes)

And look at Nathan here, I even excitedly called out the word "EXCAVATOR" to try to get him to look up. Didn't work, he could care less if the world crumbled around him. There was a tractor nearby. I think the only thing she has on her mind has to do with washing her hands with soap.